Thursday, March 31, 2016

I'm pleased to report that this WJ IVresource is now available. I received my copy today. A link to information regarding the book from publisher is here. A PDF copy of the book at can be downloaded here.

I am a minor contributor to one chapter in the book. As per stated conflict of interests, I need to disclose that I am a coauthor of the WJ IV and thus have a potential indirect financial interest in the success of this book.

Autism
is a developmental disability characterized by atypical social
interaction, interests or body movements, and communication. Our review
examines the empirical status of three communication phenomena believed
to be unique to autism: pronoun reversal (using the pronoun you when the pronoun I
is intended, and vice versa), echolalia (repeating what someone has
said), and a reduced or even reversed production-comprehension lag (a
reduction or reversal of the well-established finding that speakers
produce less sophisticated language than they can comprehend). Each of
these three phenomena has been claimed to be unique to autism;
therefore, each has been proposed to be diagnostic of autism, and each
has been interpreted in autism-centric ways (psychoanalytic
interpretations of pronoun reversal, behaviorist interpretations of
echolalia, and clinical lore about the production-comprehension lag).
However, as our review demonstrates, none of these three phenomena is in
fact unique to autism; none can or should serve as diagnostic of
autism, and all call into question unwarranted assumptions about
autistic persons and their language development and use.

Abstract

Understanding the neural and metabolic
correlates of fluid intelligence not only aids scientists in
characterizing cognitive
processes involved in intelligence, but it also
offers insight into intervention methods to improve fluid intelligence.
Here
we use magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging
(MRSI) to measure N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), a biochemical
marker of neural energy production and efficiency. We use principal
components analysis
(PCA) to examine how the distribution of NAA in the
frontal and parietal lobes relates to fluid intelligence. We find that
a left lateralized frontal-parietal component
predicts fluid intelligence, and it does so independently of brain size,
another
significant predictor of fluid intelligence. These
results suggest that the left motor regions play a key role in the
visualization
and planning necessary for spatial cognition and
reasoning, and we discuss these findings in the context of the
Parieto-Frontal
Integration Theory of intelligence.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Mind wandering research has exploded this past decade. I have oodles of PDF articles in a mind wandering folder that I wish I had time to digest. Important information being learned about the brain networks involved (default, salience, and central executive networks in particular)

Not All Mind Wandering Is Created Equal

Mind wandering—sometimes seen as daydreaming or "zoning out"—has been shown to facilitate creative thinking and problem solving, but in the wrong context it can…

Abstract

Adaptive social
behavior appears to require flexible interaction between multiple
large-scale brain networks, including the executive control network
(ECN), the default mode network (DMN), and the salience network (SN), as
well as interactions with the perceptual processing systems these
networks function to modulate. Highly connected cortical “hub” regions
are also thought to facilitate interactions between these networks,
including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsomedial
prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and anterior
insula (AI). However, less is presently known about the relationship
between these network functions and individual differences in
social-cognitive abilities. In the present study, 23 healthy adults (12
female) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while
performing a visually based social judgment task (requiring the
evaluation of social dominance in faces). Participants also completed
both self-report and performance-based measures of emotional
intelligence (EI), as well as measures of personality and facial
perception ability. During scanning, social judgment, relative to a
control condition involving simple perceptual judgment of facial
features in the same stimuli, activated hub regions associated with each
of the networks mentioned above (observed clusters included: bilateral
DLPFC, DMPFC/ACC, AI, and ventral visual cortex). Interestingly,
self-reported and performance-based measures of social-cognitive ability
showed opposing associations with these patterns of activation.
Specifically, lower self-reported EI and lower openness in personality
both independently predicted greater activation within hub regions of
the SN, DMN, and ECN (i.e., the DLPFC, DMPFC/ACC, and AI clusters); in
contrast, in the same analyses greater scores on performance-based EI
measures and on facial perception tasks independently predicted greater
activation within hub regions of the SN and ECN (the DLPFC and AI
clusters), and also in the ventral visual cortex. These findings suggest
that lower confidence in one’s own social-cognitive abilities may
promote the allocation of greater cognitive resources to, and improve
the performance of, social-cognitive functions.

White matter matters. Yes, my readers may be tiring of this common mantra.

But, another new study has again implicated the importance of white matter integrity. More importantly, the study suggests that a working memory training program (dual n-back) may be effective in increasing white matter integrity, thus increasing the efficiency and synchronization of communication between different brain networks. Click on the images below to enlarge.

This study is consistent with my hypothesis that the effectiveness of some brain training programs may be due to increased white matter tract integrity. An explanation, with a link to a MindHub pub white paper outlining this hypothesis, can be found here. Other white matter related posts can be found here.

About Me

Dr. Kevin McGrew is Director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics (llc). Additional information, including potential conflicts of interest resulting from commercial test development or other consultation, can be found at The MindHub(TM; http://www.themindhub.com ). General email contact is iap@earthlink.net.